Otto Fabricius

Otto Fabricius

Otto Fabricius (6 March 1744 – 20 May 1822) was a Danish missionary, naturalist, ethnographer and explorer of Greenland. [1][2]

Biography

Otto Fabricius was born in Rudkøbing on the island of Langeland, Denmark where his father was a rector. In his youth, he was largely educated at home by tutors. In 1762, he was matriculated at the University of Copenhagen. In 1765, he was admitted to the Greenland Mission Seminary (Seminarium Groenlandicum) where he attended classes taught by Poul Egede. In 1768 he graduated with a degree in divinity.[3]

He was sent as a missionary to the southwestern coast of Greenland from 1768–1773. During this period, he made enormous amounts of observations and collections. The facilities at his command were primitive to the extreme. His laboratory was an Inuit house made of turf. His only artificial light was an oil lamp. He had a few magnifying glasses and only one book was in his library, Linnaei Systema Naturae by Carolus Linnaeus. Nevertheless, he made enough zoological observation to be able to publish Fauna Groenlandica (1780), which was written in Latin, after his return to Denmark. Here, he described 473 animal species, 130 of which were new to science. Detailed descriptions are given, including information on habitat and behaviour, the vernacular Inuit name, what use inuit people make of the animal and not least how they caught or trapped it.[4][5]

In 1774, he was appointed rector at Drangedal in Telemark, Norway where he stayed until 1779 while he completed work for a Greenlandic language dictionary which was published in 1804. In 1789, he succeeded Poul Egede to become a lecturer in the Greenland Mission Seminary. In 1818, he was appointed an Honorary Bishop of the Church of Denmark and awarded a Doctorate of Divinity.[6]

Fauna Groenlandica

References

  1. ↑ Otto Fabricius (Store norske leksikon)
  2. ↑ Otto Fabricius (Den Store Danske)
  3. ↑ Otto Fabricius, dansk zoolog och språkman, präst (Ggravsted.DK)
  4. ↑ Fabricius, Otto (1744-1822) (Megatherium Society)
  5. ↑ Otto Hansen Fabricius (Faaborg-slægten)
  6. ↑ Otto Fabricius (Trustees of Dartmouth College)
  7. ↑ Fauna Groenlandica (Biodiversity University Library)
  8. ↑ Fauna groenlandica. Pattedyr og Fugle. Oversat og forsynet med Indledning og Kommentarer af O. Helms (Aabenhus Aarhus Antikvariat)

Other Sources

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/30/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.